A tribute to the Slip ‘N Slide

The government has officially taken away everything that’s fun for kids. For better or worse, my boys will never know the joys of traveling untethered in the back of a station wagon, playing lawn darts, climbing on an arsenic-laced wooden playground structure or shooting BB guns at their friends. Now the idea of putting a barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge is being taken seriously, ensuring that our children and their children’s children will see a pink blur when they drive across the bridge and try to catch a glimpse of Angel Island or downtown San Francisco.

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Watch out for the driveway …

But there is one awesome pastime that children can still enjoy, even though I can’t recall playing with one and not seeing someone get injured: The Slip ‘N Slide.

The U.S. Consumer Product and Safety Commission came out with a report in 1993 that all but declared the slides a menace, warning adults and teens not to use the product because of the spinal injury risk. But did the folks at WHAM-O wimp out and pull their product from the shelves? Hell no. Fifteen years later, you can purchase more than a dozen Slip ‘N Slide products. (My favorite is the Slip ‘N Slide Double Auto Racer, where kids are actually encouraged to treat the long strip of banana-yellow plastic like their own personal drag strip.)

Below are the Slip ‘N Slide injuries that I remember sustaining, although I’m sure that there were many more that I’ve suppressed. All of them were worth it. Not only was the Slip ‘N Slide the best toy ever on a hot day, but I would argue that each one of these traumas made me stronger as an adult.

Please add your Slip ‘N Slide memories to the comments.

1. The jammed finger on the lawn stake: I’m not sure how Slip ‘N Slides are designed now, but in the old days you had to fasten the corners onto the lawn with a plastic or metal stake. Every third ride or so you would slam your knuckle or toe or even part of your face into this accessory. Whatever. That’s what health insurance is for.

2. The Slip ‘N Slide overshot onto a concrete driveway: I had one friend with a Slip ‘N Slide who had a particularly small patch of grass to work with, so the end of his Slip ‘N Slide tarp was always pretty close to flush against either his driveway or a bush. Being that inertia can be kind of a bitch, at least one person would get too much speed and overshoot the tarp. Of the two options, I remember the bush being much less painful.

3. The Slip ‘N Slide hidden sprinkler concussion: This only happened to me once, and in retrospect it was the most painful of my Slip ‘N Slide injuries. Thankfully the cut I sustained was on the top of my head, so the scar didn’t show up until I started losing my hair almost 20 years later.